Day to Day
by Heath1993
Summary: Sequel to Sleep With Me. A look at Peeta and Katniss' daily life in District 12, and how they spend their evenings. M for adult situations. Post-Mockingjay, PeetaxKatniss.


**Title: **Day to Day

**Author:** Heath1993

**Characters/Pairing:** Peeta/Katniss

**Rating:** M (Non-explicit sexual content)

**Spoilers:** Mockingjay

**Summary: **Sequel to Sleep With Me. A look at Peeta and Katniss' daily life in District 12. Post-Mockingjay, PeetaxKatniss.

xXxXx

Once Peeta and I are awake again, for the second time this morning, I know we can't afford to sleep in any longer. Peeta seems to have the same idea - there is still a lot to do around the district to get things up and running again, so we can't afford to waste any more time sleeping or being catatonic.

I sit myself up and reach down to gather my clothes up from around the bed. Once I have my vest on, it hides most of my burn scars and I can almost pretend I don't have them. I get my shorts back on as Peeta is doing the same, and I pause to give him a kiss on the forehead as I hear Greasy Sae enter the house. She's here to make breakfast for us, something she has done since the Capitol fell, to help us get back on our feet. Usually it's just breakfast for me but lately she's prepared extra, because she knows there is a good chance of Peeta being here too.

"We'd better get to the kitchen," says Peeta, "we're behind schedule already."

xXxXx

Breakfast is a lot more awkward than usual. Greasy Sae seems to pick up that something has changed between us but can't put her finger on it. That doesn't stop her from trying to figure it out and muttering through possible situations. Peeta and I keep glancing at each other across the table, and I imagine he's thinking the same thing I am. "_Please don't figure it out, it will be embarrassing."_

Once breakfast is over, we both get ready for the day. As I'm brushing my hair and getting it tied back in preparation to braid it, Peeta asks if he can do it for me. I shrug and let him, it saves me the effort. He does a pretty good job of it too, my hair isn't as long as it was but it's been a while, so there is just enough to braid.

We go our separate ways once we leave the house - Peeta towards a replanting project, designed to bring some greenery back to the district. I'm meant to be helping in a rebuilding effort today but I decide I can be late, I need to go to the apothecary first. Because my mother is working in a hospital now, far away, there is a new person running the herbs-and-potions business down here. She's a nice enough woman, a rebel from the Capitol, and her shop carries a scant amount of Capitol medicine. It's not very popular, and some people don't like to buy from her. But she's the only option for me unless I want to risk it, so I put some money down on the counter for a single pill. I swallow it right there, and I no longer need to worry - it will prevent me from getting pregnant, which is the last thing I want. It's the last thing I've ever wanted.

On my way out, I glance a shelf of other forms of protection, so I turn back around and buy some, just in case there is a repeat of last night. Seeing as nothing went wrong, I don't regret it, and Peeta doesn't look like he does, it will be safer to have something on hand just in case.

I put the box into my bag and go as fast as I can towards the building sites further down. Once I arrive, I grab my equipment and help to lay out cement for the brickwork, until we reach the point where a window frame goes in. The last window I put in was a disaster - I didn't sit it right and it fell down. So I just leave that to the other workers and go around to another section.

Work finishes at around five. By then the sun is setting and it will soon be too dark to do anything, so that's when everybody packs up. I have no equipment of my own, so I just have to wash off what I borrowed and return it.

I remove my boots at the door and leave them outside, to save some work so that dirt won't get tracked into the house. Greasy Sae is there already, preparing dinner. I'm washing my hands at the kitchen sink when Peeta returns and I stifle a laugh. I left my boots out because I didn't want to track dirt in, but maybe Peeta should stay out too. He's got dirt everywhere, even in his hair, so I gesture for him to move into the bathroom before he's seen. Greasy Sae does some of the housework and she wouldn't be happy to see him that dirty.

To distract her, I offer my assistance with the cooking and I'm put in charge of stirring a simple sauce. Dinner is ready to go on the table when Peeta returns, having washed the dirt and grime off.

Dinner is pretty quiet because the two of us are exhausted from our day. Sae's grand daughter has joined us at the table to have her dinner too, and she provides most of the conversation, chattering about something she is knitting with the blue ball of wool I let her have from my mother's basket. I don't catch too many details, just something about "dropping stitches" and having to "frog the whole thing", but I nod along politely and try to seem like I'm paying attention.

Even though my muscles are aching, once dinner has been eaten, I start washing the dishes. On an evening, I usually take this chore to allow Greasy Sae to head home, but in the morning I usually have too much to do and can't stop to do it. Peeta stands beside me to dry them and put them away. It's mundane compared to what we've done in the past - competing in the Games, supporting each other when things went bad, but we still make a good team.

Bed is a welcome sight once the day is through. We crawl under the sheets and immediately move to the way we lay every night, with my head resting on Peeta's shoulder and his arm around my waist. Peeta is asleep pretty quickly, and I occupy myself with pushing the curl off his forehead every time it slips down, until I lose consciousness too.

I'm not too sure how long I'm asleep before I'm awoken by Peeta, in the midst of a nightmare. It was difficult to tell before, but I've slowly learned the single sign - his muscles all tense up in his arms and chest, and over time I've learned to wake when I feel that beneath my head. Nightmares always take a few minutes to end, so I wait until I'm certain it's winding down before I stroke Peeta's hair and lean against him, talking to him until he wakes up.

"I guess last night was a temporary fix then," he says, once he has come back to reality. I nod and keep running my fingers through his hair. I still feel a few grains of sand, and sit up.

"You still have dirt in your hair."

"I do? I didn't have much time to wash all my hair before dinner. I'll go do it now, I won't be getting much sleep tonight after the nightmare." Peeta pulls himself up too and then stands. Night is the time when I want him around the most, so I climb out from under the sheets and follow, dragging the whole lot to the floor in the process.

"I'll help you," is my excuse, though really it's because being alone when it's dark scares me more than it should after all we've been through.

In the bathroom, I have him sit on the edge of the tub so the floor won't end up soaked. It would be such a stupid way to go if one of us slipped and broke our neck, not when we've survived two rounds of the Games and a rebellion. As an extra precaution, I put a towel on the floor in case the warm water I'm pouring into his hair makes the floor wet anyway.

"We've gotta make sure the shampoo gets every bit of your hair."

He just nods and allows me to do it. There's a bottle sat by a bar of soap near the wall, so I reach across for it. I think it's supposed to smell like a fruit, one I tried in the Capitol a long time ago, though I don't remember what it was called. The shampoo smells pretty good and I scrub it into his hair until it is barely visible beneath the suds.

"Katniss, I love you," says Peeta. It feels pretty nice to hear him say it now, even though it used to be something that filled me with a sense of guilt when I heard it.

"It's a bit difficult to take you seriously when you look like you've got a colony of bubbles on your head."

The next thing I know, Peeta has a handful of suds and rubs them into my hair.

"Now you do too."

Not much really makes me smile nowadays but this does, and I upturn a cup of water on his head. The bubbles dissolve, but some of them run down with the water, and soak into the shoulders of Peeta's shirt. It's already too drenched to sleep in now, so I just continue to dump water on his hair until it runs clear, and then wipe the bubbles from my own hair.

The result is a very clean, but saturated Peeta, with water still dripping off him. He's laughing, which is a good sign, because I didn't bother to pay attention to any protests he was making at the time. There is a towel folded up by the sink, so I pick it up and drape it over his head.

Initially, it's covering his head completely, but having his eyes covered could trigger something, so I push it back further til it sits just on his hairline. These things never mattered before, but with so much trauma eager to come forth the moment we're reminded of it, every single action has to be considered carefully.

It takes a few minutes to dry his hair and even then it still remains pretty damp. The leftover water has to dry naturally, so the towel gets tossed into a corner. Peeta reaches under the hem of his shirt and pulls it off, throwing it in the same direction.

"Maybe we should head back to bed now, we still have to work in the morning," he says.

Though I nod, I don't really agree. Peeta is quite nice to look at, especially now, with damp hair and no shirt. Going to bed, in the dark, where he's harder to see, isn't my main priority.

Peeta moves to stand up, but I stop him for a moment by resting my hands on his shoulders. Our lips meet moments later as we both lean forward, and we quickly become tangled together, with my arms draped down his back, and one of his in my hair, the other stabilising my balance at my waist.

The bathroom isn't the best place to be kissing. Pretty soon, my knees are hurting from the hard tile floor, so I relent and break the kiss so we can go to bed and get some sleep.

xXxXx

Except it doesn't quite turn out that way. We look at each other once we go back to the bedroom, and have the exact same idea. Before too long, we're having an encore of last night, with the sheets tangled around us.

Though we've only done this once before, we are making use of what we learned the first time. We know what not to do and have a better idea of what we should be doing. I find the whole thing to be a little nerve wracking and embarrassing, because Peeta can force weird noises out of my mouth with just his fingers. I have to ball my hands into fists to avoid scratching his back.

We fit perfectly together, and my legs can rest against his hips comfortably. We're even at the right angle to kiss each other. Peeta keeps tracing his fingers over my skin, with both hands, but when just one of his fingers dips back between my legs, I gasp out his name and my hips rise from the bed.

Peeta stops kissing me and pushes my hair to one side to trail some up my neck to my ear. He's so gentle with me, and it further convinces me that I've made the right choice in picking the dandelion over the fire.

Within a few minutes, both of us reach our peak. Peeta pulls me close with his free hand, and kisses me again, though we have to break it because we're short of breath from panting. My brain feels like it's going to implode and for a few moments I can't even think.

Slowly, our breathing returns to normal and the sweat stops running over our skin. As my heartbeat slows back down, Peeta is drawing shapes on my skin with his fingers, and pressing kisses to my temple.

"I love you, Peeta," I say, though it's hard to raise my voice above a whisper because my throat is hurting from all the noises he managed to coax out of me. Peeta puts both arms around me and pulls me close.

"I love you too. Even if you do pour water over my head."

The last thing I do before I fall asleep is laugh, glad that Peeta never gave up on me.

xXxXx

Aaand, that's the end. Thanks for reading! I wanted to do a continuation of my last oneshot because that was just about their first time and didn't really explore the next day. That and I wanted to venture a guess at what the two of them ended up doing to help District 12 every day once they were capable of doing it, so I added that in too. That's how I see their daily lives as being until the district is reasonably well-off and more people are interested in living there.

As for the knitting terms that Greasy Sae's granddaughter said, I know those because I do some knitting in my free time. Dropping a stitch means forgetting to knit it, and that can wreck the whole thing if you don't notice and fix it right away. Frogging something means having to unravel it and restart, possibly because of dropped stitches. Just in case anybody was wondering.

Like last time, I'd just like some feedback on whether you think I got Katniss right - I struggle to write girls because I'm a guy and half the time I think "I have no idea what I'm doing!"

I hope you all enjoyed it.


End file.
